12.11.06
Posted in competitive, Social cognitive, social interaction, metacognition, Achievement, motivation, Cognitive, Cooperative Learning, Tutoring, Information Processing at 11:45 am by youngsah
O’Donnel, A., Reeve, J.M. Smith, J. (2006) Chapter 12: Learning from Peers. Educational Psychology: Reflection for Action, Wiley. p. 388-425.
Generally a good overview of peer learning including cooperative learning and peer tutoring. It gives an overview of several perspectives and brings in specific theorists and their ideas while talking about the application of their ideas to classroom practice. I didn’t realize how much I needed an overview to consolidate my thinking until I read this chapter. It bridged application and theory very well for me and helped me compare and contrast different perspectives more effectively. Also, it got me thinking a bit about special education and ESL students in cooperative learning which I haven’t really looked at all that much.
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10.30.06
Posted in Cognitive, Annotated References - Class readings at 4:10 pm by youngsah
Phillips, D. C., & Soltis, J. F. (1991). Problem solving, insight, and activity. AND Phillips, D. C., & Soltis, J. F. (1991). Piagetian structures and psychological constructivism.
Chapter 4 Problem Solving, Insight and Activity, focused on Gestalt theory and Köhler but brought in Dewey as well.
Chapter 5 Piagetian Structures and Psychological Constructivism focused mainly on Piaget going over his stages, cognitive structures, and criticism of Piaget.
I liked the criticism of Piaget in part because the way that I’ve read of him before has either been through textbooks, which generally support his approach, or through the books he wrote, which of course support his theories though the books themselves are rather dense in them he is very often not very clear. As far as brining Gestalt and Dewey together, I liked that too. Since I have a psychological background (with little educational experience or knowledge to speak of) it’s nice when authors bring the two disciplines together. It helps me put things in better perspective.
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Posted in Achievement, cooperative context, Collaborative Learning, motivation, Cognitive, Cooperative Learning, Annotated References - RDP readings at 1:54 pm by youngsah
Gillies, R.M. (2003). The behaviors, interactions, and perceptions of junior high school students during small-group learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(1), p. 137-147.
This study examined over one hundred 8th grade students from multiple schools while participating in structured or unstructured group work in heterogeneous achievement groups over three semesters. Gillies focused on helping (both helping behavior and receiving help), task structure, and student perception. Students were less cooperative in unstructured groups than structured ones, but students showed similar learning outcomes. Students in structured group work also thought that group work was more fun and produced better quality work.
It would have been more interesting to have the structured and unstructured groups compared with competitive or control groups on these measures. But that wasn’t the author’s intent or line of inquiry. She wanted to look at whether there was a difference (looking at lots of measures) between structured and unstructured group learning experiences. She found a couple. Interestingly enough, although the interactions might be different the academic benefit was similar or the same. Students may feel differently about their group experiences but they were still educational experiences either way.
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10.22.06
Posted in Cognitive, Annotated References - Class readings at 11:52 pm by youngsah
Phillips, D. C. (1995). The good, the bad, and the ugly: The many faces of constructivism. Educational Researcher, 24(7), 5-12.
This article focuses on the diversity of perspectives in the constructivism perspective. Phillips attempts to organize the perspective of constructivism along three axes. These axes were “individual psychology versus public discipline”, “humans the creators versus nature the instructor”, and “individual cognition” vs. “social and political processes”. The author gives examples from different disciplines of different theorists/researchers and their ideas and how they fit into these categories.
A good overview. Helpful not only in untangling the constructivism perspective but also in placing persons from diverse disciplines into the constructivist framework. I don’t know that there aren’t better categories for parsing these things out but it’s a helpful start. It was odd that the author bifurcated the second axis. It seems that would be reason enough to rethink an axis when it’s different than another axis. Putting together these three axes and mapping people on a three dimensional plane would be fine and dandy if the author hadn’t split the second axis. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Though I didn’t’ know all of the people Phillips talked about I knew some and that I think was helpful enough.
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Posted in Cognitive, Annotated References - Class readings at 11:51 pm by youngsah
Bruner, J. (1960). The Process of Education. Chapters 1 and 2.
The first chapter introduced Bruner’s theory on how education should be reformed and the things we should focus on in educating students. He had four themes he wished to explore: “structure, readiness, intuition, and interest”. The second chapter focused on the idea of structure. He anchored the section with four points. These were: students must understand fundamentals to understand a subject well, details are better remembered when they are put in a preexisting structure, understanding fundamentals in a subject can lead to transfer of knowledge or skills to another subject, ideas should be taught and built on to get students from “elementary” knowledge to “advanced” knowledge. Interesting. My first official exposure to Bruner. My first impression is that these chapters generally made sense. He also acknowledged that pragmatically this approach requires a balance between new discovery-based techniques and the old techniques where students are told something and then forced to test it. Knowing what I know about the memory system (in an information processing way) focusing on structure makes absolute sense. It’s difficult if not impossible to connect ideas to anything if there isn’t an underlying structure to ground them.
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10.09.06
Posted in Team-Assisted Individualization, Collaborative Learning, Achievement, Student Centered Learning, motivation, Cognitive, Cooperative Learning, Tutoring, Annotated References - RDP readings at 2:05 pm by youngsah
Slavin, R.E. (1996). Research for the future: Research on cooperative learning and achievement: What we know, what we need to know. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21, 43-69.
A general overview of what this author thinks needs to be addressed in further studies in Cooperative learning. The author talks about the problem of different researchers agreeing that cooperative learning can improve learning but differing on how they explain these effects. The author also covers 4 theoretical perspectives (Motivational, Cognitive, Cognitive Elaboration, and developmental) and talks about their implications for further research. A couple minor perspectives are also discussed including Social cohesion (in motivational). The author talks about how tasks based on different perspectives are often hard to compare because they often use different methodologies (pairs, groups of 4, different kinds of tasks, etc.). The paper also covers the topics of individual and group accountability, and group goals.
Ha, ha, page 50 of this paper (and reiterated on page 58), “One of the most effective means of elaboration is explaining the material to someone else.” Then the author goes on to cite several studies. On the other hand, this paper does mention that advocates for gifted students sometimes make the complaint that cooperative learning is not as beneficial to them as it is to other students. More research needed. Other than the general good overview of the field, this article is for me hopeful because it shows that there are still a lot of problems and angles left to cooperative learning.
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09.25.06
Posted in Cognitive, Information Processing, Annotated References - Class readings at 12:35 pm by youngsah
TIP.org: Information Processing Theory, George Miller.
This article gave a brief overview of George Miller’s most well known contributions to psychological theory. These are “chunking” and TOTE (Test-Operate-Test-Exit). The first relates mainly to working/short-term memory while the later has many applications.
Again, I’m teaching TE 150 this semester, we just covered chunking, and in undergrad I taught an intro psych lecture on memory so “chunking” is one of those concepts close to my heart. It is one of those things that are so simple that you don’t think about it until directed to.
Though I had not previously been formally introduced to TOTE it is a simple explanation of natural processes (behavioral or mental) so it is also intriguing in that kind of “huh, I never thought about that in that way before” kind of way. It reminded me of those step-by-step decision making models in elementary and middle school textbooks. The language of TOTE is different however. The decision making model was to be used to frame decision making in and was made from the inside looking out, while TOTE has the feeling in the language of someone from another field looking in.
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Posted in Cognitive, Information Processing, Annotated References - Class readings at 12:34 pm by youngsah
Miller, P. H. (1993). Information processing theory
This piece was an overview of information processing theory. The author covered some of the theory’s impact on psychology. It’s introduction of the mind as computer metaphor and how it looks at development (children as microcomputers?). Also, the author covered specific topics that information-processing theory tends to cover like memory and knowledge construction/organization. Also, the different approaches within information processing theory such as computer simulations were covered.
My first semi-formal introduction to this approach was in my Intro Psychology course in undergrad and my reintroduction (more formal this time) was in my Cognitive Psychology course. I didn’t realize that much of how we think of the memory system stems from this approach directly. It makes sense when you step back from it but it’s not something I’ve thought of before. I guess I just accepted the little boxes with arrows between them.
Near the middle of the end of this article I flashed back to my high school’s attempt to teach us computer programming (I was passable but not good at basic, if I remember right). It’s an interesting concept to try to duplicate human thinking through a computer simulation though it is problematic because you can get to the same processes in very different ways so I don’t know that it’s helpful.
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